David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Just sold novelette “The End of the Silk Road” to Gordon Van Gelder at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction!

This is my “Venus noir” story — a cheery little tale of murder, betrayal and lost love set in the same universe as “The Wreck of the Mars Adventure” and my recently-completed-and-not-yet-sold novel Arabella and the Marsman. But while those stories take place on Mars, in 1701 and 1813 respectively, this one is set on Venus in 1936 — a foggy, froggy, overheated Venus, always overcast, always as hot and soggy as New Orleans in August, a swamp of vice and corruption that makes Los Angeles look like Pleasantville.

I wrote this story in ten days and had a lot of fun writing it. I hope you’ll enjoy it too.

Big props to Daniel Abraham and the rest of the Rio Hondo gang for help with the plot.

Some time ago I saw a notice on a mailing list about something called a “NASA Social,” which is an opportunity for people who follow NASA on social media to attend a NASA event and meet each other in person. In this case the event was the January 23 launch of the TDRS-L satellite from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But you can’t just show up — you need to put your name in a hat and hope it gets drawn. I had never considered attending one of these before, but this one didn’t conflict with anything that couldn’t be rescheduled, so I submitted my name through a web page and then forgot all about it.

But then last week I got an email from NASA: I was one of 50 applicants randomly selected to attend the launch! I have to pay for my own transportation, food, and lodging, but… rocket launch! So I’m going!

In addition to the launch itself (assuming everything goes as planned), which will be a night launch and therefore spectacular, there will be a whole day of meet-and-greet with NASA scientists and engineers, a behind-the-scenes tour of the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral, and hanging out with other space geeks. I’m jazzed.

The TDRS system (it’s pronounced “teedris” and stands for Tracking and Data Relay Satellites) is a network of geosynchronous satellites which provide nearly continuous high-bandwidth communication with spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit, including the Hubble Space Telescope and International Space Station, and TDRS-L will be the 12th one launched (hence the letter L). Space geeks of a certain age (or who have seen The Dish) may remember that in the early days of the Space Age contact with orbiting spacecraft was intermittent and was available only when the spacecraft was over a ground-based relay station; the TDRS satellites and associated ground stations make this problem a thing of the past, so this launch is important because it provides support for a whole bunch of present and future space development.

You can expect serious tweetage and bloggination from the event.

Whee!

Last week I noticed that I was cleaning my glasses, and cleaning my glasses, and cleaning my glasses, and my vision wasn’t getting better. The problem was not in the glasses, but in my left eye. Floaters.

Anyone who has read my story “Floaters” will understand why I was a bit creeped out by this.

Now, I’ve had floaters for years, and they are usually nothing to worry about, but these were a lot worse than I’d had previously and they seemed to have come on suddenly, so I made an appointment to have the eye checked out.

Well, the good news is that there’s nothing unusual or seriously wrong, it’s just a common age-related complaint called posterior vitreous detachment. My retina is still firmly attached, but when you get to a certain age, especially if you are nearsighted, the jelly inside your eye kind of shrinks and separates from the eye wall, and that’s what I’m seeing. The process of detachment takes about 6 weeks, and “now would be a bad time to take up kickboxing.” I love my eye doctor (whose name is, as it happens, Dr. Love).

The bad news is that these floaters are not going to go away, and I can probably look forward to the same in the other eye one of these years. Oh, well.

On the other hand, with my new insurance I only had to pay a $15 co-pay for the visit (thank you, Obamacare) and with only one eye dilated I get to freak people out all day. So, all in all, it’s a win.

So I was Skyping with my friend Janna the other day (and when did that become a verb, anyway?) and I reflected upon the fact that video calling is something that had been part of “the future” so long that it kind of snuck up on us when it became the present.

Video calling has been possible, even practical, for over 50 years. AT&T’s video phone was a memorable part of the 1964 World’s Fair, and I’m sure there were prototypes much earlier. I remember when I was a kid that a variety of video phone technologies were introduced every year or so, every one promising to be The Wave of the Future. Yet, even though each of these was technically and economically feasible, every one failed to catch on in any meaningful way.

Many people, myself among them, thought that video calling never would catch on, not because it was technically infeasible but because it was socially undesirable. You might want to see the person you were talking to, we reasoned, but who wants to be seen wearing whatever it was you happened to be wearing when the phone rang?

Until… well, I’m not sure when. Some time ago — it feels like three to ten years — something changed. And now people are Skyping and FaceTiming and Google Hangouting all over the place. It’s practically normal.

When exactly did this happen? And what changed to make it possible?

Janna theorized that it was the widespread adoption of smart phones with front-facing cameras that made the difference, but my gut feel is that the normalization of video calling is a bit earlier than that. My guess is that the inflection point might be the 2003 Iraq war, which may have been the first major event that combined adequate and widespread technology infrastructure (laptops with Internet and video cameras) with long-term overseas deployment of large numbers of lower- and middle-income Americans. Because of this war, millions of average Americans have used this technology to communicate with loved ones who were otherwise inaccessible, and once they’ve started doing it (and bought the hardware, and climbed the technology learning curve) they will keep doing it with their friends.

Another alternative explanation is, as it has been for so many other technologies, pornography. But I think that ChatRoulette and Cam Girls postdate the widespread adoption of video calling rather than being an instigator.

When do you think video calling became mainstream, and why?

Kobo’s holiday sale ends today (January 5)! Use promo code 50COUPON for 50% off hundreds of indie ebooks, including my award-winning short story collection Space Magic. Use the “Add to Cart” drop-down rather than the “Buy Now” button to allow entering the promo code.

Book View Cafe’s holiday sale ends tomorrow (January 6)! Over 100 ebooks are half-price, including my novella Second Chance! Books are listed at full price but will be automatically discounted at checkout.

Happy new year!

I’m (still) working on a big retrospective post of all the cool stuff I did in 2013, but at the prompting of John Scalzi I thought I would put up a separate post with my award-eligible work from 2013.

• “The Wreck of the Mars Adventure” (novelette) in Old Mars, anthology edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin, October 2013 (buy it at powell’s | amazon | b&n). In 1701, Captain Kidd (yes, that Captain Kidd) becomes the first Englishman on Mars.
• “Artist’s Retrospective” (short story) in Daily Science Fiction, website edited by Jonathan Laden and Michele Barasso, September 2013 (read it at daily sf). An artist “unpaints” a picture in a world where time runs backwards.
• “Wavefronts of History and Memory” (short story) in Analog, magazine edited by Trevor Quachri, June 2013 (buy it at itunes | google play). A radioarchaeologist travels thousands of light-years to peer into Earth’s past, but her own history gets in the way.
• “Letter to the Editor” (short story) in The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, anthology edited by John Joseph Adams, February 2013 (buy it at powell’s | amazon | b&n; hear it at tales to terrify). Mad scientist Dr. Talon explains himself.
• I also made “Letter to the Editor” into a 15-minute video, which is eligible for the Hugo Award in Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.

Of these, I’m proudest of “The Wreck of the Mars Adventure,” but it would be a real hoot to get Dr. Talon on the Best Dramatic Presentation ballot.

As you may know, I retired from my day job in 2007. People often ask me if I retired to write full-time, but the fact is that I’m not really spending much more time writing than I did when I was employed. Instead, we spend a lot more time traveling.

Here are all the cities where I spent at least one night away from home in 2013:

Las Vegas, NV
Redmond, WA
Lake Quinault, WA
Walnut Creek, CA
Bend, OR
Taos Ski Valley, NM
Kennewick, WA (x2)
Minneapolis, MN
Milwaukee, WI
San Francisco, CA
San Antonio, TX
La Grange, TX
Lincoln City, OR
Barcelona, Spain
Greenwich, UK
Brighton, UK
Orlando, FL

Plus numerous visits to Seattle to hang out with Janna and other friends.

This is just a quick reminder that SFWA’s Pacific Northwest Reading Series is having our next events in Seattle and Portland soon!

On Tuesday, January 14 in the Seattle area, we’ll have Nicola Griffith, Kelley Eskridge, and Janet Freeman-Daily. The University Bookstore will be on hand again selling books and all the authors will be available to sign.

When: Tuesday, January 14, 2014, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Where: Wilde Rover Irish Pub & Restaurant, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033

On Wednesday, January 15 in Portland, we’ll have Mary Rosenblum, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and Rick Lovett. Wrigley-Cross Books will be selling books and all the authors will be available to sign.

When: Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Where: McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. Portland, OR 97211

See http://www.sfwa.org/for-readers/sfwa-northwest-reading-series/ for more information on both readings. Tell your friends!

I hope you can join us! It should be a lot of fun.

Did you get a shiny new e-reader or tablet for Christmas?

Book View Cafe is having a holiday sale! Through January 6, over 100 ebooks are half-price, including my novella Second Chance! Books are listed at full price but will be automatically discounted at checkout.

Kobo is also having a holiday sale! Through January 5, use promo code 50COUPON for 50% off hundreds of indie ebooks, including my award-winning short story collection Space Magic! Use the “Add to Cart” drop-down rather than the “Buy Now” button to allow entering the promo code.

Enjoy, and spread the word!